The recessional hymn was still ringing in his ears as they went through the lychgate and began walking up the hill towards the cemetery, where Tam was to be buried in the plot alongside his parents. A flood of speculation had poured forth from the press as to why a man ‘once hailed as the country’s most popular cricketer’ had destroyed himself. Some said that he could not endure the ex-player’s slow fade into obscurity; that he drank too much; that his nerves were plagued by an irrational hatred of noise; that he had money troubles; that he had never recovered from the death of his mother eighteen months before. Will was surprised by the conviction of these obituarists and editors, who pronounced on the matter as if they had been on terms of intimate familiarity with the deceased. He, who actually had known him, was utterly in the dark as to what might have prompted him to take his own life – or, as one paper put it with dubious flippancy, ‘to walk before he’d been given’. And how well did one know one’s friends in any case? Outside the church, while waiting for the funeral cortège, someone had introduced him to a lady named Dora Lambert, who, astonishingly, turned out to be Tam’s ex-wife. In the five, nearly six years they had known one another Tam had never once mentioned the fact that he’d been married. Will mumbled out his condolences, unable to guess how recently the former Mrs Tamburlain had seen her late husband, or what circumstances might have caused their sundering in the first place. Her appearance had winded him. If he didn’t even possess the verifiable facts of Tam’s life, how could he begin to understand the shadowy motivations that might have led to his death?
They were assembling around the grave, the black-clad mourners lining the open maw of the trench like crows along a branch. Will half listened to the vicar reciting the exequies, the words rubbed serenely smooth from use. Then, at a signal, they were invited to pitch a handful of earth into the excavated rectangle. Blindly, he scooped up some dirt and let it fall through his hand; it crackled on the wooden face of the coffin. He took a step back, catching nobody’s eye. Earlier he had nodded to one or two players, staff from the Priory, the mayor and his wife, but he did not look at Beatrice for fear of the desolation he might read in that gentle countenance. Avoid, avoid. He must have been so tightly coiled that the light tap on his shoulder made him jump. Eleanor had leaned towards his ear.
‘Have you seen who’s over there?’
Will followed her gaze past the throng to a spot a little distance beyond, where a woman stood, her figure straight and oddly stern. She was dressed in a long black coat, with a high fur collar. Her face was covered by a dark veil, but he knew her instantly. Once the mourners began to melt away from the graveside, he detached himself from Ada and, steering a path between the tilted grey headstones, approached her. Connie pulled back her veil by way of greeting, and he took the hand she held forth. They looked at one another for a few moments, uncertain of how to begin.
‘Beatrice sent me a telegram,’ she said, as though to justify her presence.
Will nodded. ‘It’s good of you to come – I mean, such a long way,’ he said, wondering if he sounded proprietary. ‘You’re still living in Paris?’
‘Yes. I’m only here to –’ The droop of her eyes completed the sentence.
‘When I saw you in the veil I thought of that time – d’you remember?’
The ghost of a smile passed across her face. ‘Of course I do. The Savoy. You rescued me.’ It was kindly said, but the mention of rescue stirred in Will confused feelings of regret and hopelessness; he might have saved another, if only he had been more vigilant.
‘He told me – Tam told me – about what happened. That night.’
Connie, eyes downcast, paused for a moment. ‘He was – so desperately kind. After what I’d told him he might just have turned me over to the police. But instead he helped me …’ There was a tremble on the last two words that squeezed at Will’s heart.
‘Tam would never have turned you in, even if you’d been guilty. You know that. He regarded you as a friend.’ The mood had become fragile between them. He sensed the next question coming before she asked it.
‘I just can’t help thinking about – why. He once told me that there was a high susceptibility … among cricketers. Did you know …?’
Will stared off, his gaze not quite focusing on the line of poplars beyond the low cemetery wall. ‘I’d heard of certain cases. But I never thought Tam would be one of them. He didn’t leave a note – anything.’
Distress had welled up into her eyes. ‘I feel –’ she swallowed back a sob ‘– I feel I should have helped him – but I don’t know how –’
Will wanted to say something – anything – to comfort her, but misery had stopped up his throat, and no words would come. She turned away, gathering herself, for at this moment his sister and Ada had broken from the main body of mourners to join them. Ada shook hands with Connie, though gave no sign of having remembered her from the summer. Perhaps it was just as well. Eleanor’s conversational sympathy (‘Awfully sad, isn’t it?’) was a relief to them, though to Connie it seemed to mark the end of any further intimacy between her and Will. They had begun to walk down the hill, back towards the town.
‘We ’d better go and find Mother – she’ll be worrying about the caterers,’ said Eleanor presently.
Will turned to Connie. ‘There’s a gathering at the house,’ he explained. ‘Would you join us?’
Connie shook her head. ‘I’m sorry – I have to get back to Folkestone.’ She decided not to make mention of the police presence in town; it would not have been a surprise to see Relf and his detectives waiting at the station for her. With their mutual connection now gone, it suddenly occurred to her that this might be the last occasion she and Will would ever meet.
‘Goodbye, Constance,’ said Eleanor, shaking her hand. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t have met in happier circumstances.’
‘I am, too,’ she replied, exchanging a nod of farewell with Ada. Will realised what he should do.
‘Ada, I’ll see you at the house. I’m going to accompany Miss Callaway to the station.’ Ada nodded, and joined Eleanor in the cavalcade of mourners heading out of town.
As they walked through the narrow streets leading to Warwick Square, Will was oppressed by an agitated sense of things unsaid between them. The loss of their friend had brought them together, yet he felt that the opportunity to redeem himself and their shared past might tempt him into unwise confessions. So he kept silent, hoping that Connie would take the responsibility of clearing the air. Perhaps she intuited his wretchedness, because she was at last moved to speak.
‘She’s very pretty – Miss Brink, I mean.’
‘Yes, I suppose she is,’ he replied. He realised the moment had come. If he told her now and she betrayed some inadvertent feeling, he would know that it might not be too late. He could explain to her about that new year’s night at the Savoy, when he had been squiring Ada but thinking about her – Connie – and how that had caught him off guard, and the calamitous mess he had then made of mollifying Ada’s hurt feelings. How in heaven’s name had he turned an apology into an offer of marriage? Too impetuous of him. Swallowing hard, he added, ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve asked her to marry me.’
He glanced at her, half expecting her to break step from the surprise, but she walked on, nodding slowly. Her expression, in profile, gave nothing away.
‘And the lady has consented?’ she asked, in a tone that made Will’s heart sink. It was not cold, not at all, only casually inquisitive, as though this were a matter of mere curiosity.
‘Yes, she has,’ he replied – but I’d been thinking of you the night I proposed, he wanted to say. But of course he did not. Now she turned her face to him.
‘Then I offer you my congratulations,’ she said, with a calmness he found almost intolerable. She doesn’t care, he thought. She really doesn’t care. ‘Have you set a date?’
‘We’ve thought about September,’ he said, trying belatedly to sound a note of pride. ‘Once the season’s finis
hed.’
‘Ah, yes. Another disadvantage to living in France. No cricket.’
They were nearing the forecourt of the railway station, and Connie drew down the hat’s veil over her face – a precaution, she explained, against being identified. Will nodded. The subject of his betrothal seemed to have been dismissed. They had come to a halt, and the atmosphere between them seemed abruptly heightened by their imminent parting. He could see her hesitate for a moment.
‘There’s something I’d like to know. Did the rain keep off that day – I mean, the day of Tam’s benefit match?’
Will, wrongfooted by the question, frowned into it consideringly. ‘Um – yes, it was fine, as I remember. No rain at all. The players made an archway of bats on the pitch for Tam to walk under. He didn’t tell you?’
Connie shook her head. ‘I always meant to ask him, and I never did.’ She was about to ask if Tam had made any runs, but then couldn’t bear to know, in case he hadn’t. ‘Well …’ she said, holding out her hand to him. Will felt a panicky compression in his chest, and looked earnestly at her.
‘I can’t help feeling this may be, I don’t know, the last time we’ll meet – and that you’ll forget all about me.’
He expected her to reply in the same nonchalant tone she had used in discussing his marriage plans. But he was mistaken. ‘I shall not forget you,’ she said. ‘I’ve never forgotten anyone I once knew. My acquaintances have not been numerous, and in my present situation they are unlikely to increase. If we don’t meet again – then I wish only a happy life for you.’
Will was stunned by her words, and by the unaffected way in which she had spoken. He wanted time to parse them and pursue their implications, but already she was backing away from him, joining the general footfall heading into the station. He took a step towards her, and she raised her hand in a gesture that seemed half-farewell and half-admonishment: this far, and no further.
‘Goodbye, Will,’ she said, and was on her way. Had he taken that extra step he would have been close enough to notice that, behind the veil, her eyes glistened. It was the moment she had wished him a happy life that had almost undone her, because she knew now that it would never be a life with her in it.
PART TWO
The Shadowy Coast
17
I
SQUINTING INTO THE gloom, Will held the shirt over his knee and began to examine the coarse fabric. Along the inside seam of one arm he could see a beaded line of tiny insects, like white translucent lobsters. These were the lice that had been feeding on his skin all day. He had felt them moving about first thing this morning, but had not had time to deal with them until now. He knew from Bailey that the men were infested more or less permanently. Will had imagined that having his kit laundered regularly would spare him, as though it were an officer’s privilege to be exempt, but he had succumbed like the rest. Lice were no respecters of rank. With a sigh of disgust he pressed his thumbnail against the first until he heard it crack, then moved on to the next. When he had finished this part of the operation he lit a candle and carefully ran it along the seams. The trick was to coagulate the blood of the louse without burning a hole in the shirt. At his request Eleanor had sent him over a bottle of Harrison’s Pomade (‘Sorry to hear that you’ve become lice-ntious,’ she wrote) and for a while that seemed to deter them. But with hydra-headed tenacity another colony would sprout up, and he had resorted once more to the candle. He had just dropped another louse into the flame when Bailey, a junior subaltern, came into the dugout.
‘Oh – sorry to interrupt, sir,’ he said as he took in what Will was doing. ‘Should I come back later?’
Will shook his head. ‘Come in. Have a seat.’
The seat was an empty ammunition box. Bailey plumped himself down on it with a distantly preoccupied air. He was a slight, fair-haired fellow of about twenty-one with unnaturally blue eyes and a laugh that became almost falsetto on its upper notes. In civilian life he had been a bank clerk in Deptford and still lived with his parents. Here he had become known as the chief distributor of nicknames, and enhanced his popularity by making sure that the rum ration got to the men in time. Now he had taken out a penknife and was paring his nails thoughtfully.
‘How was London?’ asked Will. Bailey had just returned from a week’s leave.
‘Better than here,’ he replied with untypical glumness. He looked slyly at Will. ‘’Scuse for asking, sir, but have you heard … anything?’
‘About the push? Nothing for certain.’
Bailey ducked his head despondently and sighed. ‘You know, when I was home I kept being asked by people, When’s the Big Push? Even me mum had heard about it!’
Will picked off another crushed louse and dropped it on the candle flame, where it fizzed. He had heard Bailey’s complaint from others. Everyone seemed to know about the impending offensive, including, by now, the enemy. In London, the government had negotiated a settlement with disgruntled munitions workers, who wanted to know why the May Bank Holiday had been postponed. Lloyd George, minister for munitions, had explained that output from the factories should not be interrupted at least until the end of July. The implication in the delayed holiday was taken up by the newspapers the next day; the deduction was there for anyone to make.
Will had decided that the only way to endure the days and weeks of uncertainty was to assume a blank impermeable stoicism: why fret about what was inevitable? The euphoria of 1914 and all the talk of a war that would be over by Christmas seemed now to belong in another era, though it was less than eighteen months since he had left the Officers’ Training Corps near Oxford, his head brimming with lectures about gas attacks and the deployment of the Mills bomb. Then he had been awarded his commission to serve as a lieutenant in the 1st M—shire Rifles. He shuddered to recall his excitement on the eve of sailing from Folkestone, when he had booked into a room at the Metropole and written a brief letter reassuring Ada that the deferment of their wedding would only increase his – he was going to write ‘ardour’, but then wondered if she would understand the play on words. He wrote ‘devotion’ instead. And how proud he had been of his new riding boots, his service revolver, his Sam Browne belt, whose dark leather he had polished till it gleamed like a conker.
Having long felt the absence of a cause in his life, Will had taken this one to heart. They would wipe the floor with the bloody Boche. For King and Country! His patriotic fervour had suffered its first small cooling on arrival at Etaples, the base camp that lay a hard day’s march from Boulogne. He immediately felt dwarfed by the sheer size of the encampment, a huge grassless paddock on which hundreds of dirty white tents stretched as far as the eye could see. The smell of old sweat, stale food and creeping dread had assailed his nostrils, while the brutish voices of NCOs bullying the men on platoon drill made him wince. Its atmosphere was closer to that of a prison than a military encampment. The OTC back in England seemed a model of civility in comparison.
He had missed the spring offensive of 1915, and for a while took to wondering if he would ever look a German in the face. He had made out spectral figures on night patrols, heard their voices and, occasionally, been shaken by a detonating shell; there had been skirmishes, raids, false alarms, but he had yet to be involved in battle. That changed in the last week of September, when the 1st M—shires went up the line at Loos. As the minutes swooned down to zero hour, Will realised with a terrible lurch how close he was to conflict, and how dearly he wanted to survive it. He remembered his foot touching the fire step and the odd sensation of weightlessness on finally hauling himself over the top, as in a dream when you fall down a precipice and see the rocks at the bottom rushing headlong towards you. He woke from the dream without being crushed; other men at his side did not. Hypnotised, he moved forward into the roar of the barrage, like a swimmer wading into a tumultuous sea, its waves breaking over his head. Just below that noise he could hear the jagged metal patter of a machine gun, though he could see no more than ten yards through the drowning
curtain of smoke. He kept walking, encouraged by the voice of the company commander nearby, chivvying the line along. ‘Not so fast on the left,’ he heard. Not so fast. That was the amazing thing, the steady mechanical pace at which they were advancing, like walking out to bat, when deep within he could hear a countervoice urging hurry, hurry. But hurry to where, and into what? He cast a quick glance behind him and saw the ground writhing, hideously, with wounded bodies. ‘Keep the line straight,’ he heard, and continued walking. About his ears Will could hear a high whirring, like a mosquito, charging the air; only afterwards did he realise that these were individual bullets passing inches from him. Directly ahead he saw a man kneel suddenly, as though in prayer; Will thought he should warn against such casual behaviour, but on putting his face close to the kneeling man saw that a bullet had perforated his throat. The man’s face wore an expression of crumpled vacancy. He left him in that supplicant posture, and wondered, again, why he still stood when so many others were falling. The line had become more ragged now, yet still they staggered into the blinding storm. Then of a sudden the earth beneath his feet convulsed, the side of his helmet took a monstrous clang and he was pitched forward through the air. The next thing he knew he was prostrate in the smoking black jaws of a shell hole with two kilted Highlanders, who had dragged his body in with them. He had been partially deafened by the blast. For perhaps three hours he lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, a fragment of shell lodged agonisingly in his hip, until stretcher-bearers ducked into the hole to retrieve him. The Highlanders had disappeared, and he hadn’t caught their names to be able to thank them.
Half of the Human Race Page 32
